Mac OS® X Leopard™ All‐in‐One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 5. Sharing That Precious Internet Thing

In This Chapter

• Finding out how Internet sharing works

• Choosing between hardware and software Internet sharing

• Connecting your Macs to a cable/DSL router

• Adding wireless support to a shared Internet connection

Although I discuss lots of fun stuff that you can do with your network in previous chapters, this has to be my favorite: sharing a single Internet connection between all the computers on your network. If you have more than one computer, I'm sure that you've had to deal with the dilemma that pops up whenever more than one person wants or needs to access the Internet at the same time.

Luckily, because small home and office local area networks (LANs) use our old friend TCP/IP for network communications, connecting an entire network to the Internet isn't as troublesome a task as you might think. In this chapter, I talk about different hardware and software options for sharing your Internet connection as well as how to include your wireless devices.

Sharing the Internet

Sharing a single Internet connection between all your computers can be a boon simply because of the reduced chances of random acts of violence. (Internet deprivation can be an ugly thing, you know.) Although I won't claim that Internet sharing will save lives, it can indeed save you from headaches and arguments when more than one person wants to use the Internet at once.

Throughout this chapter, I talk a lot about cable modems and Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) ...